Helena Rubinstein used guile, brilliant branding, and more than a few falsehoods to lift cosmetics from an accessory for prostitutes to a desired luxury item. Geoffrey Jones reveals her history.
Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Managers often ask whether worker productivity rises or falls with work-from-anywhere (WFA) policies. This study of a real firm presents robust econometric evidence that WFA regimes can have positive effects on net worker output, especially for experienced hires working interdependently. For new hires, however, colocation is often needed to facilitate their learning.

This paper provides a step-by-step roadmap for using machine learning (ML) techniques to explore novel and robust patterns in data. It introduces management researchers to a new use case for ML tools: building new theory from quantitative observational data.
Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

This study compares how multinational corporation subsidiaries inherit knowledge from both the headquarters and the local context. To do so the authors analyzed seven years of data (2005–2011) of US patents filed by all subsidiaries of the top 25 US headquartered multinationals.

In the short and long term, distance from one’s hometown has a different effect on individual work performance. First-year performance ratings tend to be high the farther employees work from their hometown. Three years later, however, longer travel times are associated with lower ratings, with implications for managers.

Immigrants bring with them innovations from their homelands, knowledge that local inventors often build upon, says Prithwiraj Choudhury. Examples: turmeric medicine, double-entry bookkeeping, and American Chinese food.
Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

As companies adopt artificial intelligence to increase efficiency, are their employees skilled enough to use those technologies effectively? Prithwiraj Choudhury looks to the US Patent and Trademark Office for a case study.
Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

This study contributes to scholarship on how adoption of machine learning tools will shape knowledge worker productivity. Among its implications for managers, it suggests that complementarities between prior skills and technology will determine the productivity of workers using AI tools.

Raj Choudhury and Tarun Khanna examine the history of herbal patent applications, challenging a stereotype that characterizes Western firms as innovators and emerging markets as imitators.
Open for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.

Since the mid-1990s, a large number of multinational enterprises (MNEs) have set up research and development centers in China, India, and other emerging markets. Such MNEs face constraints in expanding their "geography of innovation" —that of producing and transferring knowledge across borders—because for the MNE knowledge is likely to be localized within larger, more established centers of knowledge production. How do MNEs in emerging markets circumvent this constraint? In this paper, the author uses personnel data from a Fortune 50 technology firm and studies the role of return migrants in facilitating patenting at the emerging market R&D center. The author also studies on-the-job learning of knowledge production by local employees who report to return migrants at an emerging-market R&D setting. The findings generate insights into the functioning of 'internal labor markets' of multinationals. The results are also important for managers: Given the great many Fortune 500 MNE R&D centers in countries such as China and India, and the large fraction of these centers managed by return migrants, the findings may assist those who set up and manage current and future MNE R&D centers. Key concepts include: This paper, one of the first empirical studies of skilled migration within a multinational enterprise, contributes to understanding return migration and the geography of innovation of MNEs. Return migrants and their direct reports file more patents than other local employees. (The author leverages a natural experiment to test for the latter.) Patents that have return migrants (or their direct reports) as inventors exhibit high patent citation rates, indicating that return migration is related to cross-border knowledge transfer. Local workers who report to return-migrant managers tend to benefit from on-the-job learning that they might not receive otherwise. For example, return migrant managers connect their direct reports with ideas and resources in the US headquarters; they also help their direct reports understand the patenting process at US headquarters.
Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.